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There are tons of things i want to write about. But I aggravated my back again while shopping to make meat sauce on thu evening. I love blogging and terribly miss writing. At least the meat sauce turned out great. Thanks for the recipe Deepti and for introducing me to bitter chocolate in sauces. I made a lovely grilled peri peri chicken in the micro yesterday with sauted potatoes. Also want to write about the lack of bengali and parsi joints in bandra and about the buffet in the hyatt. But cant use the comp and mobile blogging sucks (i cant see the end of the screen and hence the strange ending) and makes me use swear words. Thankfully i can read good old books and buy kaatla at kharwrite no.

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An Instagram inspired blog post
"I love Bengali food and would love to have the recipe of doi begun and dhokar dalna," said Surabhi Sehgal. Surabhi is a food stylist who has recently moved back to India, specifically Pune, from Dubai where she was till recently. I met her at a session on food blogging at the Grand Sheraton, Pune. It was organised by Jayesh Paranjape of Western Routes and Dushyant Bhatia of Eating Culture who had invited me to talk on my experience as a food blogger. In the Q&A session that followed, Surabhi spoke about how she focuses on making day to day Indian food look soulful through her work.

Her request for Bengali recipes was part of an Instagram conversation that we later had. I told her that I have a doi begun recipe on the blog but had never made dhokar dalna myself. Dhokar dalna is a dish which is often served to vegetarians on festive occasions in Kolkata. My mother used to make the latter in Kolkata when I was in school. She would make the …

A close friend of mine has become a dad recently. I am still trying to imagine him as a father and I must say visions of Steve Martin in The Father of the Bride often come to my mind.

However, it will be years before he has to throw out his daughter's boyfriends across the door. Right now he is planning for his daughter's annaprashon. This is a Bengali rice eating ceremony which celebrates a child's first bite of solid food. If memory serves me right then the honour of giving the first bite goes to the child's Mama (maternal uncle) if possible. There are other rituals too. For example the child is offered a lump of clay, a pen and a currency note. What he or she picks up is supposed to indicate the child's future profession (farmer, scholar, business). I must confess that my knowledge of rituals is a bit rusty though. Of course, there is a feast for guests.

My friend wanted my suggestions for the menu for the ceremony which he will hold in Calcutta. I am a strong bel…

Let's start with dessert‘The jackfruit payasam ice cream is based on my childhood memories of temple meals at Mangalore. They served the coconut milk based jackfruit payasam at the end of the meal on the banana leaf on which you had already eaten. So when you scooped up a bit of the payasam with your fingers you also took in a bit of the remnants of sambar, the sabzis, the rice, the salt, the fried chillies in the same mouthful!’ As I took a bite of the this dessert, which was made with scoops of creamy jackfruit payasam flavoured ice cream (made by the Taj Ice Cream folks who supply the ice creams at the Bombay Vintage Restaurant) and which had candied jackfruit seed chips and jackfruit pickle too, I was teased by flavours of jackfruit, coconut milk, salt, chilli heat, tart... all at one go. There was a reason why this seemingly strange melange made absolute sense to me, as I realised later in the day. This is because it reminded me of my childhood in Kolkata and of wedding meals …